Digital Transformation of Beekeeping through the Use of a Decision Making Architecture

Abstract

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in agriculture is far from their potential. In this article, we consider how to facilitate and systematize the process of transforming traditional agriculture into digital agriculture; Agriculture 4.0. Among the different technologies, we focus on the IoT aspects. In the article, we propose a new approach for the design of intelligent agricultural management and supervision systems. The proposed approach is illustrated as an example of application in the beekeeping sector. Indeed, this sector is affected by a crisis due to the disappearance of bees and the different actors need support to make their decisions. As an example of decisions that can be made, we can cite: treatment planning or policy planning. An architecture based on sensors and open data is proposed to help them make decisions. An implementation of it is shown; it is based on a device with sensors, as well as an interface to collect the data on beehives and show notifications and alerts to beekeepers. The proposed architecture is flexible, and it can be used in the context of different levels of technology maturity. The final objective is to develop a reusable architecture for Agriculture 4.0.